At the beginning of spring semester, it was decided that the Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) Math: 260 Pre-Calculus course wouldn’t take place, leaving students with the option to either join the online Edgenuity class or not finish their fourth year of math.

Students enrolled in Math 240: Trigonometry taught fall semester were required to pass a placement test in order to be admitted into the pre-calculus course for this semester, yet very few students achieved the scores to be able to.

“I was pretty confident that we had enough students who would be able to pass the test to get into the class,” Guidance Counselor Martina Torres said. “We needed more students to be willing to take the class, but we also needed students who had the skill levels to take it.”

With a lack of student interest for the college class and low placement scores from the beginning of last semester, the class originally only enrolled 15 students. Some students last semester opted to take the Edgenuity Pre-Calculus class to begin with as they feared the college class would be too much work.

The remaining students from the previous LAVC class who chose to finish their fourth year of math were transferred into the Edgenuity program in order to complete pre-calculus and receive their credits. However, five students out of the original 15 chose not to proceed with the class due to it being taught online.

“I felt overwhelmed by the workload in my personal life and I decided taking an additional class which required more time at home would be bad,” senior Adrian Contreras said. “Math is a class I need to have in a traditional classroom environment in order to do well.”

For seniors who submitted their college applications and listed the class, dropping this class will not affect their applications, although they have been instructed to call the college admissions offices to update them on this change. Only three years of mathematics is required for graduation for most colleges.

“It’s going to be hard to accomplish this, especially for the seniors because we have a limited time gap,” senior Genevieve Avalos said. “In my opinion, it’s going to be nearly impossible but it’s worth a try for us to get the full 10 credits.”

Like last semester, the online class takes place during period one and is supervised by math teacher Sunita Maxwell from Mulholland Middle School. Students are able to use school laptops and have their own accounts, but the school is lacking two licenses for Edgenuity and are currently negotiating funds for it.

Whether or not pre-calculus will be taught on campus next year is dependent on how many students will be moving forward to that level of math.

“It’s always more preferred to have a teacher in front of you but if we don’t have enough students to fill that class, we really can’t offer it,” Torres said.